by Simon Hall
“He was a tough lad at school?” Dan asked, as neutrally as such an inquiry allowed.
Ivy saw the point of the question and hesitated. “I wouldn’t say that. He could just look after himself. He wouldn’t have killed those Edwards, however much they might have deserved it.”
Adam looked up. “I don’t remember anyone saying he did.”
“But that’s why you’re here, isn’t it? He’s got to be your prime suspect. I’m on the list too, as his friend. And Judge Templar as well, because of what he said in court.” Ivy tried another thin smile. “It’s the gossip of the building, you coming here to speak to us.”
Adam went back to his notes, so Dan resumed the interview. “You think Martha and Brian Edwards deserved to die?”
Ivy rubbed at his scar, before saying defiantly, “Yes, I do. You saw all the anguish they caused. They were going to get away with it.
I don’t have a particular problem with what happened to them.”
“Really, Mr Ivy?” Adam interrupted. “And what about the young woman who was walking past their house when the explosion happened? Because that’s the problem with revenge, isn’t it? It’s never clear cut.”
Ivy’s face flushed. The moon was turning red. “Oh, let me guess. I suppose you’d say people should leave the law to you and the courts?”
“Yes, I would.”
“You didn’t do so well with Annette, did you?”
“Look, Ivy—” Adam snapped, but the usher had found a theme and wasn’t to be interrupted.
“That’s the problem with this place. It’s a court of law, not justice. I get sick of seeing victims treated like criminals, while everyone does all they can to look after the offenders. And it’s getting worse.”
Ivy’s rant faded. His chest was heaving. Adam looked back down at his notes and said, with a determined calm, “We were talking about your alibi, Mr Ivy. So – no one can confirm what you were doing in the early hours of this morning?”
“Maybe.”
“Meaning?”
“I don’t have to tell you.”
“That’s true,” Adam said gently, before delivering the punch. “Just like I don’t have to arrest you and let you sit in the cells, but I still might.”
The threat prompted a hasty reconsideration of the rebellion. “I was up most of the night, like I usually am. I was online a bit. Sending a few emails. And…”
“Yes?”
“Well…”
“Yes?”
“Watching some porn, if you must know.”
Adam’s lip curled like an old parchment and the usher added quickly. “It’s not illegal. Just some women doing—”
“And it’s not what I’m interested in,” came the sharp interruption. “You suffer from insomnia?”
“Ever since I was a kid. I’ve never had a proper night’s sleep in my life.”
The detective made a clicking noise with his tongue. “What a coincidence. Judge Templar suffers from sleeplessness too.”
“So?”
“So – it’s interesting, isn’t it? That two people, who might just have a motive to murder the Edwards, and who work in the same place, both suffer insomnia?”
Ivy shrugged. “It’s more common than you think. I have tried to help His Honour, but it’s one of those things you have to face alone. It’s a cruel illness.”
Adam thanked Ivy and began to get up, but the usher stayed sitting. “Going to see Roger now, are you?”
“That’s a matter for us, Mr Ivy. But yes, we will see him in time.”
“Let me save you the effort – and him the upset. Don’t bother. He didn’t kill the Edwards.”
“Really? And how would you know that?”
“Because he couldn’t. It’s just not him. Can I tell you something about the kind of man he is?”
“If it’s quick.”
“It will be.”
Adam stopped in the doorway. “Go on.”
“Two weeks before I was due to get married, the hotel rang to say they’d double booked us. They wanted to palm us off on this other place miles down the road. It wasn’t anything like as nice. Marie was in tears. I poured it out to Roger, and he just said he would handle it and not to worry. The next thing I know, the hotel are back on the phone, apologising and giving us an even bigger do to make amends.”
Adam was edging through the door, but Ivy wouldn’t stop. “Roger even offered to bail me out when I got conned. He’s a great man. He could never be a killer. Look at all the charity work he does. He’s kind, loyal and thoughtful, too. I’d do anything for him.”
And now Adam stopped and gave the usher an impenetrable look. “Would you, Mr Ivy? Would you really?”
***
They broke up the short walk to the Civic Centre by stopping at the Pepperpot café to get a coffee. Dan sat at a table in the sunshine and checked his watch as Adam waited to be served. The time was just before half past eleven.
“Don’t worry,” the detective said, without looking round. “We’ll still make it to the Edwards’ place for lunchtime. I take it you want to do some kind of live broadcast, as well as being in on the fire investigator’s briefing?”
Dan had long given up being surprised by his friend’s powers of observation. “Yes, please.”
The café wasn’t busy and the coffees arrived quickly. It was a wise tactical move. They tasted fresh and strong, far better than anything likely to be on offer from the Council. No public sector drink of Dan’s experience had ever compared to that produced by free enterprise.
Adam spooned some chocolate froth into his mouth, took a sip and emitted an approving noise. “So, discussion time. What did you make of Templar and Ivy?”
Dan swirled his drink. “That gossip about Templar’s eccentricities looks like it’s true. He was so up and down with his rants about justice, his misery about his wife and then glee at the bizarre Newton’s Cradle thing.”
“Agreed. But the chances of him being the killer?”
“He’s got the expertise to do it without leaving any clues given all the cases he’s presided over, particularly that other gas explosion trial. On the other hand, judges don’t often become criminals.”
“That’s true. But it’s interesting both he and Ivy have trouble sleeping.”
“That could just be a coincidence.”
Adam’s face wrinkled at the sound of a trigger word. Many times he had lectured Dan about how detectives tended not to believe in coincidence. It was a favoured theme; that they often pointed the way to successful prosecutions.
“Ivy was obviously bitter about the legal system,” Dan went on. “As was Templar to an extent. They’ve both had years of seeing justice not being done. That could give them motives. There’s also Ivy’s closeness to Roger – perhaps even devotion might be a better word. Would he kill the Edwards to avenge the death of his best friend’s daughter? That might be pushing it a bit, given that he struck me more as a follower than a leader. But whatever, I think he and Templar are both still suspects.”
“Agreed. So let’s see what we turn up when we look at their computers.”
Adam ushered a couple of pigeons from under his feet and headed towards the Civic Centre. As they approached the building, Dan looked up. In one of the many windows of the towering edifice, he was almost sure he saw the bearded face of the foreman of the jury, watching them.
***
Reception was staffed by a man and woman who had forgotten how to smile. Dan and Adam politely introduced themselves, were begrudgingly directed to the fifth floor and, with an afterthought, given security passes.
“That should sort out any terrorist threat,” Adam commented.
The lift looked like it dated from the early days of coal mining. It grumbled and ground in a far from reassuring manner so they took the stairs. It was one of the mysteries of the man that was Adam Breen that he did so without growing at all out of breath despite the lack of any regular exercise in his life. When once Dan had rais
ed the question, Adam pointed to the management of a teenage son as being sufficient to keep anyone trim.
The door they found was old-fashioned, wooden and plain and decorated only with the name of their suspect. Adam was about to knock when it opened and a hirsute head appeared. They shook hands and were escorted to two spindly wooden chairs.
The office was small, just a desk, an overflowing bookcase and three faded watercolour prints on the walls. A strip light buzzed in the ceiling and continual footsteps echoed from the corridor outside. The Civic Centre had the sense of being built in a hurry and with the cheapest materials available. On the desk was a picture of a middle-aged woman, also wearing glasses, her arm around a younger man whose hair hung down on his shoulders.
“Kate, my wife, and my son Chris,” Parkinson explained. “He’s backpacking around the world before he goes to university. He’s in Thailand at the moment, having great fun according to his emails.
I try not to think about it. Kate’s on her way out to see him. She left the day before yesterday. I couldn’t go, obviously, not with…”
Parkinson was wearing the same suit that he had for every day of the trial. Before Adam could pose a question the former foreman of the jury said forlornly, “I saw it, you know. I saw it all.”
He pointed to the window. The view looked out across the plaza and to the multi-storey car park from which Annette had jumped.
Such was the emotion in Parkinson’s voice, it was an effort not to try to comfort him. Adam attempted a few, well-worn introductory remarks; that this interview was a matter of routine, nothing to worry about. But they made no headway into easing the man’s unhappiness.
“The main point we need answered, Mr Parkinson,” said Adam, when he had reached the end of his patience – a process which seldom took long, “Is what you were doing at around four o’clock this morning?”
The question came as a surprise. “What I was doing?”
“What and where, in fact.”
“I was in bed, of course. Asleep.”
“At home?”
“Err, yes. At home. Where else would I be?”
“Alone?”
“Yes. Alone. As I said, Kate’s on her way to visit Chris. Chief Inspector, why do you ask?”
Adam said nothing, just raised his eyebrows knowingly. It was another detective’s look.
“Oh!” exclaimed Parkinson faintly, tugging at a sideburn. “It’s about that explosion, isn’t it? You think I—”
“Not think, Mr Parkinson, but we have to check.”
“I – I don’t know what to say. Am I a… a…” He found the word difficult and it took time to form. “Am I a suspect?”
“It’s purely routine. But you’ll appreciate with what you said after you delivered the verdict it suggests you might have a motive.”
Parkinson stared out at the courthouse as if it were a mortal enemy, perhaps even Hades itself, situated across the concrete of the plaza rather than the River Styx.
“I didn’t want any of this,” he lamented. “I’ve always been just an ordinary man, living an ordinary life. That was the first… well, unusual thing that’s ever happened to me. I didn’t ask for it and, to be frank, I didn’t like it and I didn’t want it. The other jurors elected me foreman because – well, because I wore a tie. And my position, too.”
He pointed to a nameplate on the desk. It said Deputy Assistant Director, Parks. Dan bowed his head to stifle a sudden urge to giggle.
Adam had decided he’d heard enough. He began thanking Parkinson for his time, in a rather abrupt manner.
“Just one further thing,” Dan interrupted, before they exited this bastion of supreme executive power. “Did all of the jury think the Edwards were guilty?”
“Oh yes,” came the emphatic reply. “That was the view of every one of us. But we also all agreed we didn’t have the evidence to convict them.”
“So whose idea was the ‘Not Proven’ verdict?”
For the first time, Parkinson looked less persecuted, and even a little proud. “That was mine. I thought it was a fitting way to get across what we really believed, so that at least a semblance of justice could be done.” He nodded hard to underline the point.
“I was determined the Edwards should suffer at least some kind of punishment, absolutely set upon it.”
Chapter Thirty
Homely Terrace had come to resemble a building site. Tipper lorries rumbled back and forth, laden with dusty rubble, the penetrating beep of their reversing alerts filling the narrow street. A swarm of workmen attacked the pile of debris where the Edwards’ home had stood.
The forensic investigations had been concluded and the house was being demolished. It was a merciful end. There was little left to save and the authorities had reached a speedy and sensible decision. Even the faceless planners and their beloved birds’ nests of bureaucracy had soon resolved the question – who would want to live in such a notorious place?
It would suffer the same fate as others which had housed murderers or hosted their crimes. A terrace that had stood intact for more than a hundred years would shrink a little, a whispered book of stories rising where the masonry had fallen. It would become one of the tales of the city, another urban memory.
At the back of the ruins, shielded as best they could from the noise, stood Adam, Claire, Katrina, Dan and the fire investigator. The message that he had some important findings to pass on proved accurate in all but one respect. The assumption of a junior detective that the person known as Indy was a man.
“Stephanie Sarnden,” she introduced herself. “Or Indy, as most people call me.”
No one else was going to ask, but curiosity was a vice Dan could rarely resist. “Because Indiana is where you born?”
“Go back a bit further. Nine months in fact, and the parents’ honeymoon.”
Dan had come to notice a common feature of women in the enduringly male-dominated emergency services: they could often become more laddish than the lads. It was something from which Claire never suffered. That, he had once proudly thought to himself, was a credit to the strength of her character.
Less happily, such fortitude was currently exhibiting itself in Claire positioning herself as far from him as possible, and continuing to treat Dan as a mere disturbance of the air. She hadn’t once looked over despite his attempts to offer a winning smile.
The day was growing warmer, the sun rising to its zenith in the sky. Indy unbunched her strawy hair, shook it down and took off her jacket to reveal a fine figure. She was in her mid-thirties, with a cute, freckled face and full lips, a combination which was only highlighted by the fine powder of the dust streaking her face.
Naturally, Claire chose that moment to finally look at Dan. He, in turn decided a deep study of the remains of the house would be more appropriate than any surveying of the charms of Indy. As he looked away he noticed Katrina had been watching him too.
Sometimes in life, all you can do is sigh.
“Let me get your theory straight,” Indy said, when she’d mopped the residue of the building site from her face. “Someone breaks in, turns on the gas cooker, gets back out, waits and then sets off a car alarm. One of the Edwards switches on a light to see what’s going on and ignites their own funeral pyre.”
“That’s our best guess,” Adam replied.
“It’s plausible. But if it’s right, your killer’s been even more methodical than you suspected.”
She delved into the depths of a sizeable black plastic tool box and held out an evidence bag. Inside were the remains of an old fashioned light bulb, the kind beloved of the British until the European Union intervened. The glass was cracked and a patch of the protective sphere missing.
“So?” Katrina said. “It probably got smashed in the explosion?”
“I don’t think so. The damage would be far worse. This is too precise. I reckon your killer did their research. This is the light from the hallway, outside the Edwards’ bedrooms.”
Adam
’s brow grew as furrowed as a farmer’s field. He was an appreciator of science in that it could tell him who had committed a crime, but a long way from being a comprehender. “Which tells us what?”
“The person you’re hunting knew about gas explosions. They wanted to maximise the chances of it all going off in a big blast. So they tampered with the bulb by chipping away some of the glass. The exposed filament would arc briefly at a very high temperature – more than enough to ignite the gas and cause a hell of a bang.”
“It looks like your theory is holding up,” Adam said to Dan, a little begrudgingly.
“And there’s something else to back it up,” Indy added.
Like a magician with a top hat, she reached once more into the box, but this time produced a sheaf of papers. It was a manual on fire investigation and the properties of natural gas.
For an explosion, there had to be a specific amount of gas in the atmosphere of a house. Between about five and fifteen per cent, according to the scientific papers which Indy brandished. Below five and there was insufficient gas, above and there wasn’t enough oxygen for detonation. She also cited some research on how fast gas can spread around a house, depending upon its age, ventilation, the number of open doors and the source of the gas.
“And that’s easily accessible information?” Claire asked.
“The research is all online.”
And now, amidst the noise of the lorries, the shifting of rubble, the beat of a radio and the shouts of the workmen, in this little group of five there was only silence. All eyes were turned inwards, and all were seeing the same images.
The killer’s rage as the Edwards were acquitted. The growing fury at Annette’s death. The resolution upon vengeance.
A quick reconnaissance of the Edwards’ house. Some calculations. A wait until the early hours. Breaking in to the house and setting the gas running. Checking the level of ventilation. Perhaps opening a door or two to increase it. Cracking the light bulb, just to be sure. Slipping back out, waiting, setting off the car alarm.